Mom’s Viral Post Reminds Us Bad Moments Don’t Make Us Bad Parents

The key to surviving motherhood is knowing and believing we’re not alone. That we’re not the only ones who have days that knock the wind from our sails and leave us feeling defeated, embarrassed, anxious, or depressed. We need to know that behind every perfectly filtered Instagram family photo are flawed people going through the same rollercoasters we’re riding.

No one gets this better than Laura Mazza, the mother of two behind the popular blog Mum on the Run.

Mazza recently shared her personal experiences when it comes to surviving motherhood. Moments that we can all relate to that make us nod along and say, “been there.”

“I’ve been the mum who’s card declined at the check out, and had to embarrassingly put shopping back with a line full of people. “But I survived it.

“I’ve been the mum who’s child pushed another child where all eyes were on me like I was a disgusting human being “But I survived it.

“I’ve been the mum who has sat in her car eating junk to shield my emotions “But I survived.

“I’ve been the mum sitting at the doctors waiting for antidepressants, ready to tell the doctor I had failed because I thought I had And I survived it.”

Look, everyone’s circumstances in life and in parenthood are different. Some days produce endless happy snapshots for the memory bank. Other days leave us holding in tears in the McDonald’s drive-thru line because we’re relieved to have 5 minutes alone to eat a meal, but scarfing down fast food in our cars as a “treat” isn’t exactly ideal.

Mazza gets it.

“And I’m not a super hero, I’m not always resilient but in the darkest days, I know, I just know I can survive. Because I don’t quit, I won’t quit. Because quitting means stopping, and I can’t stop. I won’t.

“And there were days I wanted to throw in the towel, days I had nothing left as person to give.

“Days I judged myself against those perfect mothers who had their shit together, the ones on Facebook or the model children on instagram, wishing to be like them. To be perfect like them.”

The pressure to be “perfect” — or to at least feel like you’re trying to be — is intense for mothers everywhere. Social media, as we all know too well, only exacerbates it. We may not be super heroes, but we’re trying our best. Judging each other gets us nowhere.

Mazza tells Scary Mommy that she’s always battled depression and anxiety, but — like many moms — having children intensified them for her.

“That day I wrote the post was the day I put too many things in my shopping cart and my card declined and I had to put things back, but I survived. I’m still here, we are alive we are fed we are okay,” she told us.

She continues, “I think the community on my page is beautiful, we are all going through the same things and feel ashamed to talk about it so I think it’s reassuring when someone does. I want them to know that everything they’ve got now is a real life perfect, because real life imperfections are perfect.”

There will always be days where we feel like crappy moms. Where we let our tempers and our frustration get the best of us in the heat of a crappy moment. Where we’re sure our kids must resent us, because we feel like we’ve failed.

But, Mazza writes, those moments don’t define us.

“Sure, there are bad moments,” she concludes in her Facebook post. “There will always be bad, shitty moments, but they’re just that. Moments….but bad moments are not bad mothers.”